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Language choice and language use patterns among Telugu-Hindi/Urdu-

English speakers in Hyderabad, India

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 Language Choice and Language Use Patterns among Telugu-Hindi/
Urdu-English Speakers in Hyderabad, India
D. Vasanta
Osmania University
A. Suvarna and J. Sireesha
Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences
S. Bapi Raju
University of Hyderabad

Abstract
The South Asian region as a whole is characterized by considerable linguistic plurality as
demonstrated by the magnitude of functional heterogeneity in language use. The sociocultural
and sociolinguistic boundaries are not as clearly marked in India as they are in some parts of the
West. In India where multilingualism is more of a norm than exception, factors such as historic
association among certain languages through contact, language accreditation by the State, the
identity aspirations of speech communities, prestige associated with a variety seem to determine
the nature of multilingualism, which in recent years is increasingly being undermined by the
spread of English language through education. Having realized the need for new non-western
conceptual frameworks to study cognitive aspects of multilingualism in India, we have designed
a language-use questionnaire and administered to 250 residents of Hyderabad city in the age
range, 20-30 years. This paper discusses preliminary observations on the choices made by the
participants, using the rating scales provided in the questionnaire, on their use of Telugu, Hindi-
Urdu (Dakkhini) and English in intimate, informal and formal domains.

I. Theoretical Perspectives
The phenomenon of multilingualism in India has been investigated using multiple
perspectives (e.g. patterns of language use, levels of skills, context of development) and different
disciplines (e.g. psychology, linguistics, cognitive neuroscience). While attempting to synthesize
the various ways in which the concept has been articulated, Mohanty (1994) defined bilingual
persons or communities as those with an ability to meet the communicative demands of the self,
and the society in their normal functioning in two or more languages in their interaction with the
other speakers of any or all of these languages. According to him, in India, bilingualism is an
adaptive strategy of the minor and minority linguistic communities for the maintenance of
mother tongues. This is partly born out by the figures in census reports showing gradual increase
in the rate of bilingualism in India ranging from 13% in 1971, to 13.44% in1981, and 19.44% in
1991 accompanied by a huge jump of reported ‘mother tongues’ of 3000 in 1971 census to about
10,000 in the 1991 census. The 1991 census figures also revealed that 7.26% of the Indian
population has claimed to be trilingual (Bhattacharya, 2002; Singh, 2009). It should be noted that
LSCAC 2010 Proceedings 58

mother tongue invocation during census data collection reflects language naming / loyalty of
individuals rather than the dominant language they choose to use in different domains. Even
dichotomies such as major vs. minor or scheduled vs non-scheduled languages or standard vs.
dialect hardly help in deciding the relationship between individual selves and their language use
patterns. For instance, Hindi-Urdu, going by official figures is spoken and understood by
approximately 46% of the population in India, and yet it is a minority language in the context of
the totality of speakers using non-Hindi languages and dialects. Further, the term ‘major’
language even within a given state is only an identity token since it has several regional and
social dialects associated with it where intra-dialectal intelligibility may range from zero to
100% (Pattanayak, 1981). From a linguistic perspective, Hindi, Urdu, Hindustani and indeed a
variety of other labels such as Hindavi and Rekhta are essentially the same language at the
structural level. It is only from a sociolinguistic perspective that the divergence is endorsed and
analysed (Agnihotri, 2006).
Annamalai (2001) argues that Indian multilingualism is motivated and sustained by the
primary and secondary socialization processes at home and work place and that only a quarter of
the multilingualism is contributed by formal learning in schools. People use one language for
ethnic identity, another for business transaction, another for official dealings and yet another for
entertainment, rituals and so on. Linguistic convergence that reduces the distance between the
languages in contact; the rules (not forms) getting transferred from one language to another is
one of the characteristic features of multilingualism in India. The language of a minority group
(e.g. Dakkhini, a variety of Hindi spoken in Hyderabad) living in the midst of a majority group
(e.g. Telugu) in Hyderabad is an illustrative case for linguistic convergence.
Much of the sociolinguistic research in India on bi/multilingualism addressed topics such
as language maintenance, functional distribution of communication patterns, convergence, code
mixing and code switching. Some of these studies are briefly discussed here. Taylor, Mahadevan
and Koshal (1978) reported a pilot study based on 21 Kannada-Hindi-English speakers in
Mysore which elicited self-ratings of the choice of language and interlocutor characteristics on a
7-point rating scale. The participants listened to the interlocutor who was also a fluent speaker of
these three languages. The results revealed that they preferred their mother tongue (Kannada) or
Hindi over English for communicating and for listening in that particular situation. Saghal’s
(1991) study also made use of a questionnaire to study patterns of language use among 45 Hindi,
Bengali and Tamil speakers living in Delhi. In addition to obtaining dominance scores in the
family, friendship and institutional domains, she also elicited data on these speakers’ attitude
towards different varieties of English. While mother-tongue received dominant scores in the
family domain for all the three communities, Indian English was preferred over BBC or
American English in the institutional domain. For this set of urban elite participants, Indian
English emerged as the dominant language of use even in friendship domain, only for Bengalis
and Tamilians, but not for Hindi speakers. While the linguistic composition of the
neighbourhoods may have had some impact on this finding, the author commented that English
is gradually acquiring more and more functional roles in education, administration and mass
media and becoming part of cultural identity of urban elites in India. In the context of reviewing
certain language policies in the field of education in India, Bapuji (1994) discussed a
questionnaire designed to obtain language-choice (appropriateness of use) of 60 respondents in
Hyderabad in five public domains: legislature, judiciary, administration, intellectual exchange
and commerce. The results revealed that in all these domains, English was preferred over Hindi
and Telugu. Mukherjee (1996) used a questionnaire based sociolinguistic survey to determine
language maintenance/ shift patterns among Bengalis and Punjabis living in Delhi. She found
that among Punjabis of younger generation tended to assimilate to the language of the host city,
that is, Hindi (and Hindi-English mixed code) in all the domains studied, the older generation
continued to use Punjabi. Among the Bengalis, on the other hand, there was a clear division
between formal and informal domains and even the younger Bengalis did not show any signs of
shifting from Bengali especially in the informal domain. She also noted that English had made
perceptible inroads into Punjabi and Bengali in the formal domain while there was a greater
contact between Punjabi/Bengali with Hindi in the informal (intimate) domain. Sachdeva (2002)
reported language use patterns in two North-Eastern states of India, viz., Nagaland and
Meghalaya where there is considerable multilingualism. In these two states, English serves as the
official language. One study was based on 232 educated Naga speakers from different tribes in
formal and informal domains who were fluent speakers of Nagamese (mother tongue) and Hindi
and English. He found that Nagamese and Hindi language use was conditioned by the ethnic
status of the interlocutor, whereas level of education of the interlocutors determined the choice
and use of English. The second study was based on 304 informants who were using Khasi
(mother tongue) and Hindi and English. Sachdeva’s main findings were: (1) interaction with a
LSCAC 2010 Proceedings 60

Khasi speaker triggered occurrence of Khasi (2) interaction with non-Khasi speakers triggered
use of Hindi and (3) interaction with educated speakers triggered use of English. According to
Sachdeva, in both these multilingual tribal societies, the notion of ‘choice’ of a language is a
vacuous one and that different patterns of use condition occurrence of one code rather than the
other.
In recent years, there is a dramatic increase in research on language processing in
bilinguals and second language learners world over. The focus of this psycholinguistically
oriented research is on how individuals who speak and understand more than a single language
mentally negotiate the boundaries of the two language systems that may or may not share
common features at different linguistic levels. While this research has contributed to a better
understanding of the nature of mental representations and processes in bilingual lexicons and led
to model building, it deals primarily with sequential bilingualism typical in the Western countries,
and not the simultaneous or neighbourhood bilingualism common in India. Using neuroimaging
technologies, Evoked Response Potentials and eye tracking methodologies, researchers have also
been able to observe neural representations corresponding to different linguistic levels mostly in
sequential bilinguals or those who became bilingual through formal instruction. Researchers
drawing on such neurolinguistic perspectives to bilingual language use have been attempting to
understand the intimate connection between language and the self and to theorize about
consequences of brain damage in bilingual/ polyglot speakers (see Gullberg & Indefrey, 2006,
for examples). The notion of ‘convergence’ in this perspective is at the neural level of brain areas
that get recruited in the course of acquisition of different languages.
In an illuminating essay on methodological and conceptual issues in bilingual research,
Grosjean (2006) rightly pointed out that most bilinguals or multilingual individuals find
themselves in different language modes that correspond to points on a monolingual-bilingual
mode continuum where the term ‘mode’ corresponds to a state of activation of the bilingual’s
languages and language processing mechanisms. At one end of the continuum, bilinguals are in a
totally monolingual language mode in that they are interacting only with or listening only to
monolinguals of one or other of the languages they know. Here one language is active and the
other is deactivated. At the other end of the continuum, bilinguals are in a bilingual language
mode in that they are communicating with or listening to other bilinguals who share their two (or
more) languages, and where different degrees of language mixing may take place. Here both
languages are activated, but the one that is used as the main language of processing (referred to
as the base or matrix language) is more active than the other. There can be intermediary positions
on this continuum. Since the language mode corresponds to a state of activation of bilingual’s
languages and language processing mechanisms, the choice of which language to use or when to
change, how to mix the codes or even the speed of processing while listening and so on might
depend on the language mode in a specific communication situation.
We feel this notion of ‘language mode’ or some adaptations based on it might permit
viewing ‘language using’ as a more dynamic process and help one to reflect on the need to move
away from the dichotomy of monolingualism vs. bi/multilingualism that is unsuitable to the
context of India.
There is no generally accepted theory of language use that integrates all these different
perspectives and this can create problems for those attempting to ‘measure’ bilingualism. The
debate between maximum scope vs. maximum precision is far from being settled (see Pienemann
& Keßler, 2007, for an elaboration of this point with respect to research in different disciplines).
A concern has been expressed very recently about the dominance of Euro-American theories
about language and its use (ways of speaking, speech acts, felicity conditions, implicatures and
other concepts pertaining to pragmatics). Specifically, researchers are being urged to draw their
analytic concepts from their own languages and to work across languages without passing
through the filter of Euro-American theories. This requires identification of native concepts
about language use that may seem skewed when evaluated as descriptions of the world, but are
nevertheless constitutive when viewed as assumptions that frame the act of speaking or
understanding. To cite Hanks, Ide, and Katagiri (2009, p. 3): “the way people use and understand
language is unavoidably shaped by their ideas about language, regardless of the ultimate truth
status of these ideas”. To these researchers, language is a historically embedded practice,
cognitively rich, grammatically structured, and part of the social world in which speech is a
modality of action. This view of language requires borrowing of concepts and methodologies
from different disciplines. This kind of ‘practice’ oriented study treats language as multimodal (it
depends on gesture, posture, spatial and perceptual arrangements of interactants). It focuses on
how ordinary native speakers use, understand, and represent language in the historically situated
social contexts of communication.
LSCAC 2010 Proceedings 62

II. Present Study

Drawing on some of the theoretical perspectives discussed above, we have developed a
questionnaire to obtain preliminary data on the choice and use patterns among Telugu-Dakkhini-
English speakers living in Hyderabad city. The aim is not to draw up a sociolinguistic profile of
the city, for which we do not have the expertise. A larger project we are involved in requires us
to examine the relationship between conceptualization (of motion events) and their expression
among multilingual individuals in Hyderabad. For this, we need to come up with inclusion /
exclusion criteria for selecting participants among urban educated population. It is this larger
project that gave impetus to the study reported in this paper. In line with the arguments put forth
by Hanks et al. (2009), we have in our questionnaire asked ordinary language users to inform us
as to their views on the nature of their multilingualism, in particular, which language they tend to
use with what frequency and proficiency in three different domains: intimate, informal and
formal.

The Questionnaire
The questionnaire has three sections: Section I deals with personal information about the
informants, their home environment, education history etc. Section II elicits information about
both the choice of language (on a 3-point rating scale) and the frequency with which a given
language is used (on a 5-point rating scale) using 30 questions. Section III deals with language
proficiency ratings on a 5-point scale using 20 questions. Numerical ratings in sections II and III
for all the 50 questions are quantified. The respondents have no idea as to which question
belongs to which domain since they are mixed and presented randomly across the questionnaire.
A sample of the questionnaire is available on the web at
http://uohyd.ernet.in/faculty/~bapi/DST/LUQ.doc
The questionnaire was administered to 250 informants by several people associated with
our project as well as M.Phil./ Ph.D. students of Cognitive Science and Computer Science at the
University of Hyderabad. The respondents were students from the field of Computer Science,
University of Hyderabad; Psychology, Speech Pathology and Audiology studying in colleges
affiliated to Osmania University, software professionals and a few others. Of the 250
respondents, 147 are male, and 103 are female. They were in the age range 20-30 years and were
overwhelmingly right handed (95.6%). In terms of education, 73% of them had UG level
education, while the rest had PG level education. Table 1 below provides other information
pertaining to the respondents.

Table 1: Information about the Participants

Self-rating of proficiency for
Religion Reported mother tongue all the four lang. skills*
T,D,E T,E D,E T,D
Hindu 78.0% Telugu 82% 45% 15% 2% 35%
Muslim 16.0 % Dakkhini 8%
Others 6.0 % Hindi 4%
* Percentage of the respondents who gave ‘Excellent’ rating on a 3-point rating scale.

Results
The completed questionnaires from 234 respondents (207 native speakers of Telugu and
27 native speakers of Dakkhini) alone were analyzed for the purposes of this paper. Their
responses were coded to discern patterns of language use in three domains, viz., intimate (20
questions); informal (20 questions) and formal (10 questions) for the two main language groups
(L1 Telugu and L1 Dakkhini). The maximum ratings provided by the respondents are noted and
displayed in Tables 2 and 3 and their choice of languages in different domains are displayed in
the bar charts (Figures 1 and 2).

Table 2: L1 Telugu Speakers’ Choice of Languages in Different Domains (N=207)

Domain Telugu Dakkhini English T, E D, E T, D T, D, E
Intimate 158 6 17 19 2 3 2
Informal 36 0 35 124 2 2 8
Formal 49 0 50 88 7 3 10

Table 3: L1 Dakkhini Speakers’ Choice of Languages in Different Domains (N=27)

Domain Telugu Dakkhini English T, E D, E T, D T, D, E
Intimate 3 18 2 1 0 3 0
Informal 1 3 6 3 7 0 7
Formal 1 2 7 2 10 0 5
LSCAC 2010 Proceedings 64

Figure 1: Domain Profile of Telugu-Native Speakers

Figure 2: Domain Profile of Dakkhini-Native Speakers

To summarize the main results, the two figures reveal clearly that for the respondents in
this study: (1) Telugu/ Dakkhini seems to be the choice of language used extensively in the
intimate domain, the use of these two languages however reduces dramatically in the other two
domains; (2) Both groups use Telugu/ Dakkhini along with English in the informal and formal
domains more than in the intimate domain; (3) In both groups, use of English increases as they
move from intimate to informal and formal domains; (4) There is a tendency to use all three
languages more in the informal and formal domains than in the intimate domain, a greater degree
of trilingualism seems to exist among Dakkhini speakers compared to Telugu speakers; and (5)
A considerable number of respondents rated their proficiency as being ‘excellent’ in relation to
the four skills of the three languages, Telugu, Dakkhini and English (see Table 1), and yet their
choice of language use varied across different domains suggesting that self-rating of language
proficiency alone may not be a good predictor of language use patterns.

Discussion and Concluding Remarks

Despite the limitations of the tool we have used and the limited number of respondents
who provided this data, the present study has clearly established that no single language caters to
all the needs of people in multilingual society such as India. The choice of a particular language
depends not just on the speaker’s proficiency in the various language skills, but also on the
situational demands and the interlocutors as pointed out by several sociolinguists cited in the first
part of this paper. The findings also throw light on the changing nature of language contact
situations typical of India and other parts of South Asia. Specifically, the relatively small number
of Telugu speakers using Dakkhini or Dakkhini speakers using Telugu outside home may hold
good for the urban educated young adults of Hyderabad city today. This pattern, however, may
not hold good for other age groups or for other times. How much of this can be attributed to the
ever-increasing desire to learn and use English is difficult to ascertain from the data we have
presented, although other scholars have talked about the role of English in shrinking cultural
spaces in the hitherto plurilingual ethos of our country (see Agnihotri, 2006, for an elaboration of
this point). The findings of our study also support Grosjean’s notion of language mode and the
continuum of monolingualism to multilingualism bilinguals traverse in a day-to-day life,
although this notion needs to be adapted for characterizing trilingual language use patterns.
Speaking of the notion of language use, Clark (1996) argued that there must be coordination
between the speaker’s issuing an utterance and the addressee’s paying attention, listening and
trying to understand it. Speakers and addressees cannot achieve this coordination without
establishing commonalities of thought between them. This idea that there can be no
communication without commonalities of thought is central to our work in cognitive linguistics.
The two groups differ from one another considerably in the use of Telugu-English within the
same domain, viz., informal. Can one assume then that Telugu is the dominant language for one
group in terms of directing/ influencing their thinking in activities related to that domain? The
answer cannot be a simple and straightforward yes, because, structurally, Telugu and Dakkhini
share many features in view of the close contact that prevailed between these two languages for a
very long time in Hyderabad. The results of this preliminary study into language use patterns in
LSCAC 2010 Proceedings 66

the city of Hyderabad have underscored the need to fine-tune the questionnaire further in terms
of defining the domains and specifying the contexts of language use in relation to the interaction
settings, interlocutors, topic etc. A more comprehensive language use questionnaire that is able
to tap attitudes and identity aspirations of people may help us generate a linguistic profile and a
typology of multilingual contexts in South Asia, a task that is challenging, but may nevertheless
prove useful to many disciplines.

Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India for
supporting the larger project of which this study is only a small part. We would like to thank the
following people who helped us collect and/or analyse the data: Jigar Patel, Kaneez Fatima, K.K
Mercy, M.A. Moid, Pavan Kumar, N. Praveen, S. G. Prakash, Rakesh Sen Gupta, Safia,
Santhoshi, Shailaja, Suchitra Sam, Swathi Ravindra, Santhosha, Srinivas Rao, Venkateswara Rao,
Y. Viswanatha Naidu.

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